


On The Sidelines

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-06 18:26:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3144149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What with the social progress, prospect of a new relationship, and friends' happiness to bask in, Kel has a better Midwinter than she expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On The Sidelines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [talia_ae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/talia_ae/gifts).



> On Cass's prompt "I'm looking in at the good life I might be doomed never to find." (Surprisingly cheerful, considering.)

            “Well,” Dom said, watching Neal and Yuki rotate around the dancefloor with more verve than grace. “At least someone’s happy.”

            “I’m very pleased for them,” Kel said, sipping at her mulled wine. She was just teetering on the edge of sobriety, having limited herself to one festive cup of mulled wine without realising how strong it was, and her words were slightly tarter than she meant them to be.

 

            “How far along is she? Two months?”

 

            “About, I suppose.” Kel set her wine down on a convenient small table. “Neal’s already booked his leave of absence, so he can be there when the baby’s born. It plays Trickster with the rotas, and I need to find another healer somewhere, but I can hardly begrudge him. Look how happy he is. Look how happy _they_ are.”

 

            “Confession,” Dom said, snagging a tray of nibbles from a page who protested only as long as it took her to realise that her canapés had been stolen for the benefit of Lady Knight Keladry, and who then went saucer-eyed, bowed and scuttled away. Dom took a piece of cheese with fragrant honey dashed over it, and held out the tray to Kel.

 

             “Confession?” she prompted, selecting a very small glass of some cold soup with cream and fennel on top and tasting it gingerly.

 

            “I never thought it would work out, when they were first – well, flirting.” Dom waved a hand vaguely. “Oh, I thought it would be a good thing if it did, but... no. I was very surprised when Yuki gave him that shukusen, but I still wasn’t sure it really meant anything other than being, well, a favour, until he told me he’d given her the Queenscove seal.” He grinned. “Attending their wedding came as a shock, I tell you. I always thought Neal would be a sharp-tongued bachelor until he was forty.”

 

            Kel smiled, but with a slight edge of bitterness. It dissipated as she remembered Yuki telling her she loved Neal, while Neal was alone and defenceless in the Chapel of the Ordeal. “I knew from the night of Neal’s Ordeal. Before that...”

 

            “Neal’s Ordeal,” Dom repeated, and giggled.

 

            “How old are you?” Kel demanded. “Or, more importantly, how drunk are you?”

 

            “It’s Midwinter, Kel,” Dom said reproachfully. “Season of goodwill. ’n feasting.”

 

            Kel gave him a Look, and he subsided.

 

            “Have a glass of water,” she said, summoning another page, who – to her shock – gave her a supercilious look and turned away.

 

            “...Did I just see that?” Dom said, suddenly entirely sober, and frosty in a dignified kind of way that reminded Kel that he was related to Duke Baird as well as Neal.

 

            “Yes,” Kel said rather sadly, and watched the page make his stately way back to the door where pages with trays were issuing from. The page whose tray of canapés Dom had pinched waylaid him and did something that ended with the supercilious page on the floor, and the victor proceeding smugly into the pages’ entrance.

 

            They both brightened up, Kel rather guiltily.

 

            “Ahh,” Dom said. “Adolescent bullying. Don’t you miss it?”

 

            “No,” Kel said.

 

            Dom clapped her on the back. “Me neither.”

 

            Kel just smiled.

 

            “Look at them,” she said after a moment, nodding at Neal and Yuki, now standing to one side of the dancefloor, laughing and clutching at each other’s hands.

 

            “They’re glowing,” Dom agreed. “If they can be happy, after the war, after everything...”

 

            The words  _maybe we have a chance_  went unspoken.

 

            The page who tripped her fellow up reappeared, decorous, blank-faced and carrying a trayful of cups of water, mulled wine, and sparkling Tyran cordial. She held it out, bowing.

 

            “Thank you,” Kel said, pointedly taking two cups of water and pushing one into Dom’s hands. “Happy Midwinter, mistress page.”

 

            The page blushed and stammered away.

 

            “You’re being hero-worshipped,” Dom said gleefully. “Oh, Protector of the Small, I _knew_  this day would come.”

 

            “Dom?” Kel said happily, looking affectionately up at him.

 

            He grinned down at her, blue eyes alight. “Yes, Protector?”

 

           “Shut up.”


End file.
